Microsoft will continue to support MVMC for a full calendar year after this announcement. Support will officially end on June 03, 2017. At that time, we will no longer offer MVMC on the download center and we will also retire associated content.

Not sure how I feel about this. I get “cloud first” for solutions, but for tools? I think a line is getting crossed I’m not sure I support. At least consider open sourcing it on github like you do with PScmdlets.

First it gets pulled from VMM, now its no longer free. OH and App Controller gets dumped for Windows Azure Stack…seriously?!?! Yet another example of the increasingly bad decisions by the VMM product group. Pretty soon we’ll all be calling Azure the virus of Microsoft systems management.

Azure Site Recovery is free for the first 31 days of VM replication, which means, when you enable replication for a VM (Vmare to Azure, VMware to Hyper-v), the first 31 days will be free, after that you will be charged by Protected instance/per month. This is enough to migrate a VM.
But on the meanwhile, i disagree this ‘tools firing’ strategy since we cannot just always use a cloud solution even for small operations.

I agree with the others. At least open source it. MVMC is a light weight tool. Setting up ASR takes hours and requires a dedicated on-premise server. Few VMware customers are using VMM; plus good luck trying to quickly buy it if you are not already a System Center customer. FYI, ASR is free for 31 days for each replicating VM which is plenty of time to complete a migration.

Finally, does the upcoming VMM 2016 have any Azure migration improvements, compared to 2012 R2?

I don’t see a real answer to Timothy’s request. The company that I am working with doesn’t need nor are they planning on using Azure within the next few years. They have a huge infrastructure and have spent a great deal on Data Center and VMM. I am unable to find where P2V conversions to on-premise Hyper-V servers is available in ASR. Additionally there doesn’t seem to be information on the elimination of the ASR once the system has been converted to the on premise system. If you don’t keep the MVMC product people will soon start to use the VMware conversion process of P2V and since they have to have that they might as well not convert to Hyper-V and just stay with VMware. But again what is the plan for P2V conversions to on-premise solutions that have already been invested in that do not have a need for Azure or the huge bandwidth needed for offsite replication?

This appears to be another Microsoft method to perpetuate the M$ situation. Removal of feature just to create another item that ends after a few versions to then move to grabbing more money from the customer without the regard to the true TOC.

Or you are telling us that Server is just on it’s way out and we will soon all be on Azure if we want to continue to use Windows. If that be the case I need to learn more Linux and VMware as they will end up taking over your market share in the on-premise market.

I’m not excited about this announcement – In my opinion, Azure Site Recovery, with the associated System Center Virtual Machine Manager, is significantly more complicated than this very useful toolset. The result will be slower and fewer migrations to Azure, in what should be a robust year due to the turmoil in the VMWare market.

I’d like to see the tools get easier and more powerful. You’d be hard-pressed to make that case with this announcement.

This is not a right decision and will affect many who are just looking at migrating workloads to Hyper-V. This can also have adverse impact on MSFT with customers going for 3rd party solutions to achieve the same, instead of learning the tricks and trade of Azure. You should really continue this great tool or provide customers a way to migrate workloads to Hyper-V from competing platforms or lose business and customers to other competitors.

Feels like Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot with this… If you want to continue to eat into VMware’s market share, free easy tools like MVMC are a must; especially for SMB market. Please speak to the decision makers and get this decision reversed.

I’m not going to say what anyone hasn’t already said before me. This is a bad decision that is going to make my life a lot more difficult. In my role, I utilize p2v scenarios when we acquire a company. We virtualize their existing server work loads to make it easier to retire them and absorb the workload into our standard environment.

I want a quick utility that I can run on a server… point at a disk… whatever, and it spits out a VHDx or a whole VM. I don’t want to have to worry about internet connectivity, remembering to disable protection so we don’t get billed, or any of the other shenanigans that go along with this type of a tool. It’s just making my life more difficult!

Please consider a stand alone tool the ability to spit out a VM/Vhdx (a traditional p2v), as well as enabling replication AS AN OPTION.

Hi
After converted test VMware VMs (ESXI 5.5 cluster, virtualm machine version 7 and 8) to Hyper-V 2012 R2, these machines (with Linux suse 11 SP2, Windows Server 2008R2 and Windows 7) cannot start. System cannot boot. For Windows 7/ 2008R2 in “Recovery mode” i run diskpart and the volume with system files was marked as D: and “System reserve” volume was marked as C? Why VMC change this letters. IN oryginal VM system files were of course on volume marked as C letter. I change volume letters as was in source VM machine but it doesn’t help. After reset the letters changed again and I got message that “BOORMGR is missing”.
So what is going on? I cannot move any VM from VMWare to Hyper-V. It is very frustrated bacause I wanted to change my virtualization environment to Hyper-V, but without move VMs it is not possible.

To retire the MVMC, so I think, is a very bad idea. Why? Because the customer focus is lost. A good product should have always easy tools to make work going easy without additional charges. And my p2v project is not easy to finish in a 31 day period. Should I have a look at vm ware, perhaps…